Announcing the Launch of RGME Bembino WP

February 16, 2026 in Announcements, Bembino, Design, Events, Manuscript Studies, Research Group Speaks (The Series)

“Announcing the Launch
of RGME Bembino WP:

A High-Quality Font
for Word-Processing”

Launch Date: 25 March 2026

[Posted on 14 February 2026 with updates]

The full, 16-file, professional, level of our digital font RGME Bembino has been available for a while, with several updates in response to requests for more languages or features.  We are thrilled to announce the launch of BembinoWP, a 4-file subset bringing our font to the Mac and Windows Word-processing Communities at large (by request).

BembinoWP has been circulating in a provisional version over recent months, for review, feedback. and corrections. Now we launch it more widely, for all to try out and use.

Find it here:

This release enables the font to reach desk-top publishers and report-writers using widely-available text-processing tools including Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. The BembinoWP variant offers a migration path to the full version of the font for higher-quality typesetting through professional tools such as Adobe InDesign or Quark.

Watch for its official Launch on 25 March 2026. This date marks the anniversary of the very first printed text set in Bembino: a “Happy Birthday” greeting for our Director.

For the launch, the RGME offers some occasions where you could meet the font, hear from its maker and users, and join the Q&A.

Set in RGME Bembino

1. Online Episode 23 of “The Research Group Speaks”

“Meet RGME Bembino: Facets of a Font”
Saturday 21 February 2026

Online by Zoom Meeting
1:00-2:30 pm EST (GMT-5)

Speakers

  • the Font-Designer (Leslie French),
  • the Director of the RGME (Mildred Budny),
  • the Author of the first full-length book set in Bembino (Reid Byers), and
  • the Graphic Designer of that book (Matthew Young).

Information and Registration

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2. Online Conversation in the Grolier Club Common Room
(for Grolier Club Members and Guests)
Tuesday 10 March 2026
4:00–5:00 pm

“Introducing RGME Bembino:
A High-Quality, Freely-Available, Multi-Lingual Digital Font”

Speakers (* = Grolier Members)

  • * Milly Budny, Director of the RGME
  • Leslie French, Font-Designer of RGME Bembino
    — his text, with PowerPoint, will be read by Phillip Bernhardt–House or
    by * Jennifer Larson
  • * Reid Byers, Author of the first full-length book set in Bembino, and
  • Matthew Young, Graphic Designer

We will speak about the font and the launch. Questions and feedback are welcome.

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3. Online Launch Party for RGME Bembino WP

Tuesday 25 March 2026
4:00–5:30 pm EDT (GMT-4)

Join us for an informal celebration. By request, we propose to share stories and recipes for cookies as we celebrate the collaborative achievements and generosity which have given rise to RGME Bembino and now its variant RGME Bembino WP for Word-Processing, available to everyone.

Registration

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4. Hybrid Conversation for The Baxter Society

Wednesday 8 April 2026
6:00–7:00 pm EDT (GMT-4)

Dr. Mildred Budny (Executive Director of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence) and the other speakers (see above) will speak on “Bembino, a New Multi-Lingual Font”

“The beautiful new font, supporting fifty-seven languages,
is to be made freely available to the literary community this spring by the RGME.”

Meeting: At the offices of Bernstein–Shur and on Zoom.

Bernstein–Shur
100 Middle St.
West Tower
Portland, ME 0410

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About the Font Bembino

Permission for Use

Note that RGME Bembino is FREE.
The copyright for the Bembino font programs belongs to the RGME, which grants an automatic free license for use in typeset publications, including both scholarly and commercial material.

Fine Print (in Response to Questions)

As part of the RGME’s preparations for the launch of Bembino WP, we are now registered with Microsoft as a Font Vendor.  We will add years to the Copyright Notice.  The font is not Trademarked.
Regarding licensing, this question has come up before.  Our aim is to encourage the use of the font in scholarly [and other] publications including works produced For Profit.  We want to put as few barriers in the way, and licensing has always seemed problematic.  Since we gain no revenue from Bembino we do not have the time, or the resources, to administer and police any form of licensing restriction.  It isn’t clear to us exactly what implications there would be in using Creative Commons or any of the other so-called unrestricted licenses.  The same is true for including Bembino in one of the public repositories.
The font is not Open-Source, and the source code is in a proprietary format.  So far, requests for updates have come to us, and we have worked on them, no-one has suggested a derived work.  As far as we know, the Copyright restriction would prevent anyone else attempting to sell the font as part of a commercial font package, but we would not want to prevent embedding the font in a pdf or other document.
The design of the Ethiopic glyphs is original with the intention of matching the style and weight of the other glyphs in the font.  The overall look-and-feel was inspired by the display forms in the Unicode Ethiopic table. Augustine Dickinson provided a number of suggestions for adjustments to our initial attempts.

Questions? 

Contact

Donations and Contributions

We invite Donations and Contributions to enable us to maintain our mission and make our facilities available.

Please make a Donation in Funds or in Kind for our nonprofit educational corporation powered principally by volunteers. Your donations and contributions are welcome, and can go a long way. They may be tax-deductible to the fullest extent provided by the law.

We look forward to welcoming you at our several events promoting the 25 March 2026 Launch of RGME Bembino WP, whether you can attend in person or online!

Cover of Booklet for Bembino font

Bembino Booklet Cover

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